How Marketing Teams Can Adapt to Having Fewer Industry Events – Business2Community

If you’re involved in marketing or sales for just about any industry where traveling to industry events is part of your strategy, you’re almost certainly being impacted by the growing number of cancellations for large events right now. Many companies depend on these types of events to generate new leads, close deals with current prospects and connect with current customers and partners in person. Marketing teams are faced with a real challenge when a channel they depend on is removed from the marketing plan for some period of time. So, what should marketers do to address these challenges? Here are 4 tips.

Ramp up Your Other Lead Generation Efforts

If events are a core part of your efforts toward generating new leads, then you need to find a way to replace those initiatives. One place to start is carefully looking at all your other lead generation focused initiatives. Whether that is email, content, display, social, or some other channel, take a deep dive into each of these lead generating channels. Initially, you’re looking for obvious ways to drive incremental leads. Is there an opportunity to allocate more budget and attention toward one or more channels and have them pick up the slack?

The answer may not be obvious until you begin increasing volumes where possible (sending out an additional email campaign, etc.). Watch the performance closely and make sure your cost-per-lead for any incremental is still in line with your projections. One extra benefit of attempting to ramp up your other existing lead generation channels is that you may find that you can maintain the higher lead volumes even after industry events eventually become feasible again, improving your overall lead generation program going forward.